


Joker and the Thief

by legendarydesvender (svensationalist)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Minor Character Death, Permanent Injury, Queerplatonic Partners... in Crime, Voltron Gen Mini Bang 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 22:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11610336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svensationalist/pseuds/legendarydesvender
Summary: “I see you met Nyma,” the bartender says with a wry smile after Rolo returns to the nunvillary with questions. “You're not the first person she fooled and I doubt you'll be the last. Take anything important?”“Everything except my life, really,” Rolo admits.***Life is shitty with the Empire breathing down your neck, but it’s not so bad when you’ve got a partner in crime.  A backstory for Rolo and Nyma.  Written for the Voltron Gen Mini Bang 2017; partnered with kickingshoes.





	Joker and the Thief

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to write more about Rolo and Nyma so I'm glad the Voltron Gen Mini Bang was a good opportunity. Special thanks to my partners [kickingshoes](http://kickingshoes.tumblr.com/) for being wonderful; please check out their work, it's fantastic! Your artwork inspired me to work extra hard!
> 
> Content Warnings: Minor character deaths, violence, permanent character injury (Rolo's leg).

* * *

They meet in a nunvillary on the planet Merxes.  Like everything else away from the city’s centre, this particular building is a startling contrast to the clean and gleaming main market.  It’s a rundown wreck with some of the cheapest food and drink in the capital, filled with people from all over the galaxy and beyond.

 

It makes Rolo feel at home, if he still had one of those.

 

She’s another lonely face in the crowd and he buys her a drink because he has GAC to spare after his last shipment.  Mostly, he just wants the illusion of company even if they don’t bother exchanging names.  The Galra always have eyes and ears everywhere on their colonies, so they chat about safe topics: the quality of the nunvill (tastes worse than usual), harmless local gossip and the latest news (did you see the newest posters?), the meagre hobbies they manage to keep under the Empire’s reign (they both appreciate a good game of chess).

 

“You should fly over the kinetic springs before you leave Merxes,” she suggests after he mentions he’s a cargo pilot.  “If you make the water splash into the air, the light reflects off the minerals to make a rainbow.  It’s one of my favourite things about this place.”

 

“I’ll have to take a look if you find it more worthwhile than the capital,” he says, downing the last of his nunvill.  He sees her smile and thinks it’s because of his agreement.

 

Rolo wakes up vargas later in a grimy backstreet, chained to a dented and rusting pipe.  When he manages to free himself, he realizes that both his trader license and the access chip to his ship are missing.  Then he throws his head back and laughs.

 

* * *

 

“I see you met Nyma,” the bartender says with a wry smile after Rolo returns to the nunvillary with questions. “You're not the first person she fooled and I doubt you'll be the last. Take anything important?”

 

“Everything except my life, really,” Rolo admits.  The bartender laughs at him and he supposes it's slightly deserved; the city outskirts have a notorious reputation for pickpockets and he was being careless.  “You wouldn't happen to know where I could find her again?”

 

The bartender shrugs with all four shoulders. “That would cost much more than my nunvill.”

 

It’s by dumb luck that Rolo finds Nyma waiting for him inside his own ship.  “I thought you’d have taken off by now or fenced my things to someone.”

 

“I did consider it.”  Nyma stares at Rolo thoughtfully.  “But I came up with a better idea.”

 

Rolo scoffs.  “Not sure how you could get something better than a fully functional cargo ship with a cyber-unit, but I’ll bite.”

 

“If I sold everything I’d still be on Merxes. But you’ve got this.”  Nyma briefly holds up his trader license before sliding it back into a pouch on her belt.  “You have authorization to use the main Galra trade route, unlike many other traders that come here.”

 

“Yes I do. And?”

 

Nyma smiles thinly.  “And that means you can get me off this planet.”

 

Rolo fights the instinct to grimace.  "I’m not going to do that."

 

Her smile drops like a stone.  "Why not?"

 

"I'm not risking my own skin for a complete stranger."  A small part of him rebels against saying that; he thinks he’ll never be fully rid of his conscience, no matter how hard he tries. But he tries anyways.  "That hasn’t worked out for me in the past, and I’d prefer not to do it again.  It’s nothing personal.”

 

"I thought you were different," Nyma says bitterly.  "You seemed different than the other cargo pilots who come through Merxes."

 

Rolo shrugs, not knowing what else to do.  "Well, you guessed wrong.  I'm just trying to survive, like everybody else.  And I'm not going to do that if I let a pickpocket stow away on my ship.  My life is harder to replace than everything you stole from me."  He does a lazy salute before shoving his hands in his pockets, walking out of his ship without looking back.  “Take care of my baby for me.”

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Rolo’s brother Zyane was the one who found a ship abandoned on a Zorlarian moon and patched it back together out of some constant desire to make broken things whole.  “It’s for you when I’m done,” he said while welding pipes together.

 

“What am I supposed to do with it?”  Rolo snorted, folding his arms against his chest.  “It’s not like I know how to fly one of these.”

 

Zyane grinned, face streaked with smudges of engine oil.  “So?  I don’t either.  One of us is gonna have to learn.”

 

And so Rolo learned to fly in the Zorlar asteroid belt with a ship that was falling apart at the joints.  There seemed to be a new missing piece of metal after every flight.  Zyane would just laugh and fix things again and encourage Rolo’s reckless flying.  It probably wasn’t the best idea to pilot a ship from scratch, but doing things on impulse seemed to be a shared family trait; at least he took to it quickly and with only a few minor crashes.  Flying a ship out of atmosphere was a lot different than flying the civilian crafts on Zorlar’akh, but somehow he managed.

 

The Zorlar system wasn’t very large or important in the grander scheme of things, for which the Zorlarians were very grateful.  It meant less attention from the Galra Empire because they didn’t have much value beyond a brief checkpoint on the way to somewhere else.  The asteroid belt made Zorlar’akh more difficult to land on with the larger Galra cruisers, so the Galra primarily used the bases they built on the outer planets and moons.  The commanders in charge of the Zorlarian bases were often lazy and ambitionless to the point of negligence, and their subordinates even moreso.

 

Nothing noteworthy ever happened in the Zorlarian system, which made it the perfect place to hide a rebel base underneath the Galra’s noses.

 

Rolo didn’t learn about it until he was almost twenty years old.  “We have a _what?_ ” he hissed, tamping down the urge to whack his brother with his tool when he started laughing.  “Are people _stupid_?”

 

“Stupid _and_ stubborn.”  Zyane grinned around the stalk of grass in his mouth.

 

“ _Please_ tell me you’re not one of them.”  Rolo groaned when there was a telling silence.  “ _Zyane_.”

 

“I’m not asking you to join me.  I just thought that you should know what I’m up to whenever I’m gone.”

 

Rolo frowned.  “You’re going to get yourself killed.  It’s useless fighting against the Empire.”  Rebellions were always crushed in the stories people told; there were probably even more of them that never got far enough to be gossiped about across galaxies.  Zorlar was a tiny dot on a starmap — what good could it do?  “The Galra have been in control of our system for _centuries_.”

 

“We all know we’re not going to get very far.”  Zyane shrugs.  “But sometimes change starts with the small things.  You shouldn’t underestimate them.”

 

“To the Galra, nothing outside total obedience counts as _small_ ,” Rolo bit back.  He tugged his hat harshly over his head.  “I’m going to fly to clear my thoughts.”

 

Zyane didn’t stop Rolo from leaving; Rolo didn’t stop Zyane whenever he left either, though he later wished he did.

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

Rolo won’t risk his skin for a complete stranger.  But he supposes that someone he shared drinks with isn’t that much of a stranger after all.

 

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Nyma doesn't look behind her but she still asks, “How did you find me?”

 

“You mentioned kinetic springs back at the nunvillary.” Rolo approaches slowly until they're side by side; he sits down next to Nyma when she doesn’t protest his presence.  “I asked around and people said the one near the capital is the biggest.”

 

She glances at him curiously. “But this one is the furthest away.”

 

“I figured you don't like the capital very much so I went to the spring with the least recommendations.  Seems my instincts didn’t fail me.”

 

That startles a quiet laugh out of Nyma. “Well, congratulations. You guessed correctly.”

 

They quietly stare at the water for a few doboshes before Rolo speaks.  “Why do you want to leave? Merxes isn't perfect, but…”  He refrains from saying “it could be worse” because the Empire has said it so often it's engraved into people's minds. Yes, it could be worse — at least Merxes still exists, and Nyma isn't dead.  But ‘better’ doesn’t always mean ‘enough’.

 

Nyma sighs.  “I've always wanted to leave.”  Out in the open, with nothing around them but water like gemstones and fields of Merxean clover, truth desperately escapes at the slightest hint of freedom.  “The Galra have been here for so long that nobody remembers what it's like without them. My ancestors thought that… if we just allied with them, we could live. And we did, but a people can die in different ways.  We've lost so much knowledge about ourselves that we'll never get back.  This is my planet, but it's not my home.  It never was.”

 

Rolo nods. It's a common story. Many other planets choose to surrender instead of being forcibly conquered by the Empire.  The ones who don't surrender are just as common, though the resistances never last long.

 

“If I stay here, I can survive.  I've been just fine on my own for years.”  Nyma's eyes flash, face pinched with bitterness.  “But I'm tired of just _surviving_.”

 

 

 

 

“I hear ya.” Rolo chews thoughtfully on the blade of grass between his teeth.  “Hard enough just to stay alive in the Empire, let alone feel like any of it means something.”  He pauses to wonder if he’s about to do something stupidly reckless, wonders whether he cares even if it is; he is, and he doesn’t.  “I’ll get you off Merxes on a few conditions.”

 

Nyma looks surprised for a moment.  “... What are the conditions?” she asks, voice carefully even.

 

Rolo tries not to smile.  At least she’s cautious and thoughtful, unlike somebody he used to know.  “It will be difficult getting you out unnoticed but it’s possible.  I have a way to avoid some of the security checks.  First condition: you follow my instructions, or else you get caught and we’re both arrested or executed.”

 

“I’m hazarding a guess that your other conditions will be related to your remarkable knowledge on how to hide a stowaway without being detected by customs.”

 

“You’re right.”  Rolo chews on his grass.  “The second condition is that you absolutely cannot tell anyone that my cargo ship has been, ah, modified.”

 

Nyma blinks slowly.  “You’re a smuggler.”

 

Rolo nods.  He takes a steadying breath through his nose, still thinking that he might be making a big mistake.  But he has to carry on the family tradition somehow of doing stupid reckless things, at least when it comes to helping people.  “Last condition is optional, but I think you’d have a knack for it.  If you’re interested, there’s always room for another smuggler with the freedom fighters.  We don’t exactly have people lining up to join us.  One of the downsides to being discreet.”

 

“A smuggler _and_ a rebel,” Nyma mutters, twisting her armband.

 

“A thief and a liar,” Rolo says in response.  

 

To his surprise, Nyma laughs.  “There are worse things to be,” she says, reaching into her belt pouch and taking out the key to Rolo’s ship and his license.  “I’ll agree to all your conditions.”

 

* * *

 

“I can’t believe I didn’t find this earlier.”  Nyma looks vaguely impressed by the hidden compartment in Rolo’s cargo ship.

 

“It’s a good thing you didn’t or else it’s not doing its job properly.”  Rolo grunts slightly as he carefully moves some crates around so that there’s enough space for a person to hide next to them.

 

Nyma smiles, teeth pointed.  “Are you implying that I’m as unobservant as the underpaid Galra soldiers working at the lunar checkpoint?”  She laughs when Rolo bangs his head on the low upper wall of the hidden hold.  “Calm down I was just teasing you.”

 

He ducks out briefly to scowl before ducking back in and resuming his box rearrangement.  “I meant that I’d need to figure out a new plan if someone without extensive knowledge of standard cargo ship specifications could find a smuggler’s hold.”

 

“It’s nice that you assume I don’t have extensive knowledge,” Nyma says dryly.  She saunters over to the cyber-unit — currently on standby — and hums thoughtfully.  “If you smuggle regularly, did you modify this so that the shipping logs run clean on the Galra’s systems?  I can’t imagine you getting very far otherwise.”  She beams sunnily at Rolo when he ducks out again to stare at her with raised eyebrows.

 

“... Yes, I had to reprogram them a little,” he admits, mentally noting that he really should stop underestimating Nyma lest he continue making a fool out of himself.  He walks over and gives the robot a fond tap on the head.  “Beezer, come say hello to a new friend.”

 

Beezer’s display lights up and they beep quietly in greeting.

 

“Why ‘Beezer’?” Nyma wonders.

 

It’s not a particularly personal question but Rolo hesitates before answering nonetheless.  He feels foolish about it mere ticks later; he already told an almost-stranger a dangerous secret, why would knowing the reason why he named a machine be any worse than that?  “Beezer is what I nicknamed my first ship,” he says, patting the cyber-unit as it continues booting up.  “Decided to give this little guy the same name on a whim.”

 

“You should be careful with names,” Nyma says, looking amused for reasons Rolo can’t figure out.  “They make you get too attached sometimes.”

 

He folds his arms.  “Speaking from experience?”  

 

She doesn’t deign him with an answer.  “Where do I hide?”

 

“Doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s in the compartment somewhere.  I suggest you find somewhere vaguely comfortable because you’ll have to stay fairly still for a couple vargas.”

 

“Well, staying hidden is something I’m used to at least.”  Nyma ducks into the compartment, finding a spot next to a crate near the back.  She looks at Rolo, eyes fierce and bright in the dark.  “Do you believe in any greater power?”

 

Rolo blinks, caught off-guard.  “What?”

 

“Wondering if I should be praying to anybody right now.”

 

“No need,” Rolo says, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth.  Before he closes the cargo hold, he adds, “You’ve got me.”

 

* * *

 

Despite Rolo’s cockiness, he’s just as relieved as Nyma when they make it off Merxes without incident.

 

It’s surprisingly normal, having Nyma around afterwards.  Rolo thinks he’d have more difficulty adjusting to another person with him; he hasn’t had a constant friend since leaving Zorlar.  But they get along like he and Zyane used to, which is a blessing and curse in one.  

 

Nyma slides her way into Rolo’s lifestyle with envious ease.  She even manages to charm some of the other freedom fighters within doboshes of them meeting.  With no objections from management, Nyma joins Rolo’s smuggling operations and makes them much easier to complete.

 

Rolo remembers thinking it was dumb luck that Nyma was waiting for him at his ship; he wonders now if fate exists, and if they were meant to meet and become friends and partners.

 

It’s a nice thought.

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Nyma smiles smugly, tossing her hair over her shoulder.  “So tell me — how did you manage to get anything done before me?”

 

“With more difficulty, that’s for sure!”  Rolo laughs, which is probably not the best timing when the authorities could come at any moment, but he’ll take any opportunity he can get to laugh in this war.  The situation is a bit humourous anyways.  It’s not every day that he sees a law enforcement officer stuck in a fence without their pants on.  “I have no idea how we got away with that.”

 

“Honestly speaking?  Neither do I.”  Nyma motions at Rolo to silence him before she cautiously looks around a corner.  She beckons at him a few ticks later and they continue running down the twisting alleyway.  “We should be back at our ship in less than four doboshes, then we can leave this awful planet.”

 

 _‘Our ship.’_ Rolo hides a smile, not sure if he can outwardly admit that he’s happy he’s not as alone any more, even if nobody else can see it.  “It’s not that bad is it?” he says, voice low so only Nyma will hear.  “Better than the last place.”

 

She grimaces.  “There’s this vile _stench_ that’s coming from _everywhere —_  can’t you smell it?”

 

“No?”

 

“Lucky you.”  She enters their ship first, absentmindedly patting Beezer’s head as she sidles past them.  “I’ll make sure the cargo is secure.”

 

Rolo grunts in acknowledgement, sitting down heavily in the pilot’s seat.  “I’ll get us ready to leave,” he mutters, doublechecking to make sure everything is operational before they take flight.  “We’re scheduled to depart in a varga.  Beezer, make sure our documents are correct.”

 

Nyma sticks her head out of the hidden compartment.  “The blasters are packed away, but I still need to deactivate the tracking numbers on the fuel cells so they don’t show up on scans.  Is there any way we can get to the border later?”

 

“Sorry, no.”  Rolo frowns.  “Beezer when you’re done with our documents, help Nyma with the codes.”

 

The cyber-unit chirps in easy agreement; it’s not like it’d refuse any command, but it feels right to ask politely anyways.

 

“Thanks Beezy,” Nyma coos, voice muffled because she moved back into the smuggler’s hold.  “Oh, Rolo?  You might want to check on the decoy cargo when you’re finished diagnostics.  I inspected it earlier but a second pair of eyes won’t hurt.”

 

Rolo hums and stretches his arms above his head.  “Y’know, I like this.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Having somebody else do most of my work for me.”

 

Nyma snorts.  “As if you were doing it before I came along.  It’s a miracle you weren’t caught yet.  And what kind of rebel is _this_ lazy?”

 

“I’m just _helping_ the rebels,” he points out.  “I’m technically just a smuggler, not a real rebel.”

 

“‘Just a smuggler’, he says.”  Rolo can’t see her from where he is, but he imagines Nyma shaking her head in friendly exasperation.  “You hear that Beezy?  He thinks smuggling isn’t _proper_ rebellion, as if the Empire would see a difference.”

 

Rolo scowls slightly when he hears Beezer whir in agreement.  “Beezer, how could you betray me like this?”

 

“Don’t listen to him Beezy, he’s just being jealous.”

 

“I can’t believe this.”  Rolo groans; somewhere behind him, Nyma laughs openly.

 

* * *

 

They clear the checkpoint with no difficulty thanks to their fraudulent shipping logs and cargo.  Rolo breathes a sigh of relief anyways after they leave the atmosphere.  Just because he’s experienced by now doesn’t mean that something won’t go wrong, and he always feels paranoid when going from one planet to the next.

 

Nyma breaks him out of his thoughts.  “I wonder how those freedom fighters manage to make those decoys without getting caught.  It’s not like supplies are easy to get.”

 

Rolo shrugs.  “They don’t tell me.  It’s better for everyone if people don’t have too much information.  We only know what we need to.”

 

“Makes sense.”  Nyma blinks slowly in that ponderous way of hers, like she does before asking things that are difficult to answer.  “Safer in case someone gets arrested or sells you out.  They did that with the Merxean black market too so the leaders are never caught.  Less… collateral damage.”  She exhales softly, and her next words feel heavy.  “That’s a tiresome way to live though.”

 

“Beggars can’t be choosy,” Rolo mutters around the stalk of grass in his mouth.  He tries not to chew through the stem; he’s running low.  “We’re just grunts in the grand scheme of things anyways.  Doubt we’ll change how things work.”

 

“Sometimes change starts small, doesn’t it?” Nyma says idly, unaware of how the words bring back memories that twist Rolo’s stomach into knots.  “It just feels a bit lonelier as a rebel than I expected.”

 

Rolo snorts, fighting down his traitorous homesickness.  “Well, what _were_ you expecting?  More fame and fortune and adoring fans?”

 

Nyma looks at him from the corner of her eyes, unamused.  “I thought I’d meet more people than one cargo pilot and his cyber-unit, plus a handful of undercover people using fake names on random planets.  Don’t you get lonely?”

 

Of course he does, but he’s used to being on his own until recently.  “It doesn’t matter,” Rolo says instead, though it sounds more as if he’s trying to convince himself rather than Nyma.  “The rebels have lost too many bases.  They — we can’t afford to compromise what little we have left.”

 

Nyma’s mouth forms a displeased line.  “That’s a little hypocritical coming from someone who let a stranger stowaway on his ship.”

 

“Are you really complaining about that?” he asks incredulously.

 

“No!  I’m just —”  She makes a frustrated noise.  “It’s… galling, I suppose, that the freedom fighters are all so… secretive because they don’t trust _each other_.  Look, I’m no martyr or revolutionary.  It’s hard to work with people who want us to risk our lives for a grand cause when we barely know anything about them.”

 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rolo starts, but Nyma angrily cuts him off.

 

“Stop acting like you know more than me,” she hisses.  “How can we trust them with our lives if they’re not willing to risk their own?  How do we know they’re telling us the truth?”

 

“Who’s being hypocritical now?”  Rolo folds his arms, something ugly itching under his skin.  He digs his fingers into his biceps, blunt nails leaving behind divots, trying to ignore the irritation curdling in his chest.  “Thief and liar, remember?”

 

Nyma’s mouth twists.  “I only lied to protect myself.”

 

“Yeah, and so are they!  Can’t you see they’re doing the same thing?”

 

“This is different!”  She twists her armband in agitation.  “I only had to protect _myself_ .  Nobody else was in danger.  If our superiors are lying, _we’re_ the ones who take the fall, not them.  Our assignments are getting riskier and riskier, Rolo.  We’re getting in over our heads.  But they don’t trust us.  If anything happens to us, _nobody_ is coming to save us.”

 

Rolo grits his teeth because he knows she’s right, in a way.  But she’s also wrong in other ways.  “I know what you mean but we have no choice.  There’s no way to know if the rebels will stay loyal.”  The itching, sickly feeling inside him grows.  He wants to stop talking, but he can’t.  Not yet.  Not until Nyma understands what he means.  “Even someone close to you can be a traitor under the right circumstances.  Better not to give away too much in case it turns out you trusted the wrong person.”

 

He mentally braces himself for more arguments, but… Nyma is silent.  When he glances at her face, it looks closed off and unreadable; the last time he remembers seeing her make that kind of face is the quintant he told her he would not help her leave Merxes, but he can’t figure out why she looks like that now —

 

“So you won’t trust me either, even after everything?”

 

_Oh._

 

“That’s nice,” Nyma says, words clipped short.  “You’ll be safe now, I guess.  No need to trust the Merxean thief and liar in case she’s a, what was it?  Traitor under the right circumstances?”

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Rolo says, trying to salvage what he can before everything falls apart, like Zyane patching up the first Beezer after every flight tore up more and more of its hull.  Desperate, makeshift, temporary fixes that didn’t really solve the real problems.  “You’re taking things out of context.”

 

“You don’t _give_ me context.”  Nyma refuses to look at him.  “I told you about myself at those springs.  I didn’t expect you to tell me anything, not right away, but you _still_ dodge questions.  It’s been a Merxean year by now and I still know nothing important about you.  And I thought _I_ had trust issues. Maybe I shouldn’t trust _you_ either.  Would that make you happy?”

 

Rolo hates this part of Nyma when it’s directed at him: her tendency to ruthlessly dig into someone’s weaker points just to win.  She always sees too much of the things he wants to hide, and his will to keep his old wounds hidden slowly dwindles with every time she picks at their scabs.  “I didn’t — I wasn’t talking about _you_ ,” he says hotly, frustration bubbling up like magma.  

 

“Well it sounded like it,” Nyma snaps.  She doesn’t pace when restless like Rolo does; she is dangerously still instead, like a loaded blaster with the safety off.  “I’m the only one who’s regularly around you, aren’t I?  Who else would you be talking about?  I risked my quiznaking skin for you just _vargas_ ago, and you lecture me about trust?”

 

Rolo is starkly reminded of the fact that the first Beezer fell apart in the end, despite his brother’s best efforts.  He feels like he’s falling.  “You of all people should understand that trusting too much is dangerous —”

 

“I do!”  Nyma spins to face him, looking furious enough that Rolo instinctively leans away.  “I understand _completely_ .  And despite that — in spite of _all that —_  I trusted you!  But it turns out it was just one-sided after all because you think everyone could be ‘the wrong person’ —”

 

“I was talking about _myself!_ ” Rolo shouts.  “This was never about you!  I betrayed my own brother because I was careless!”  He breathes hard, secret bursting out of him because the _years_ of guilt claw at the edges of his fraying composure.  “He’s dead and it’s my fault, the entire Zorlarian system is gone and that might be my fault, and sometimes — sometimes it doesn’t matter if you mean to do things or not, it only takes. One mistake in a war.  And people die.”

 

He takes the grass out of his mouth.  He can’t stand to have it there, not right now, not when thinking of Zyane is too painful bear.  “Go ahead and keep trusting me if you want,” he mutters, “but I’m already a traitor in the right circumstances.”

 

Nyma doesn’t stop him when he walks out of their ship.  He pretends that doesn’t upset him.

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

“Rolo!  Have you seen Zyane?”

 

“No.”  The other Zorlarian’s anxious tone fills Rolo with sinking dread.  “Did… did something happen?  Is he in danger?”

 

“The Galra are here on Zorlar’akh, I think they know something because they’re on the sun-side of the planet and I can’t reach your brother —”

 

That’s all Rolo has to hear before he sprints back to Beezer, errands forgotten and heart flying to his throat in panic.  His pulse drums in his ears as he flies recklessly to where Zyane goes every few quintants, where Zyane might still be alive if he’s fast enough.  He ignores the rattling metal slowly tearing itself away from Beezer’s wings, ignores the suffocating fear tearing himself apart, because Zyane can fix both things as long as Rolo makes it in time.

 

_I can’t lose him I can’t lose him I can’t lose him I can’t —_

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

Rolo hears Nyma’s soft footsteps behind him.  If he isn’t so tired, he’d laugh at how this is familiar, how things turned around for them both.  “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.  “I do trust you.  I trusted you since the springs, because I thought you and I were… Well. Not alike, but… close enough.”

 

“You don’t have to explain.”  Nyma sits next to him.  “I’m sorry too.  For pushing too far.  Some secrets are too painful to share, even when you want to.”

 

He makes a noise in agreement.  Something pokes his cheek and he looks up, startled.  He raises his eyebrows at the familiar grass in Nyma’s hand.

 

“Peace offering,” she says cryptically.  “Don’t drop this one, I think you’re running low.”

 

It’s just a small piece of weakness and nostalgia, a small thoughtful gesture in the grand scheme of things, but the action feels like a hint at something larger than his body can contain.  Rolo takes the grass and places it in his mouth.  Familiarity, and with it some semblance of comfort.  “Thanks.”

 

“It’s important to you, right?”  Nyma tucks her knees under her chin.  “I was wrong about not knowing anything important about you.  I never really thought about it, but it’s little things that show what kind of person you are.  And you’re someone who treasures and always chews on something most of the universe treats as a weed.  Someone who names a cyber-unit after a ship and treats them like a person.”  She looks at him, smiling wryly.  “Someone who bought a stranger nunvill just to talk about chess.”

 

 _I guess little things do matter_ , Rolo thinks, remembering how he used to believe otherwise.  Because somehow, it was the small things about Nyma that changed his mind about never finding a smuggling partner.

 

Nyma closes her eyes.  “My full name is Nyma vaa Srah’gan, third daughter of Srah vaa Hae’los and Ygan vaa Jiom’nin.  I am one of the last living members of the Merx’vaa.  Most of us are dead after the Galra allied with Merxes.  Our most knowledgeable remember less than one hundred words of our language.  I remember only seven.  I’m afraid that some quintant in the future, I will forget them all.”

 

She turns to look at Rolo, eyes fierce and bright in the dark.  He absentmindedly notes that they’re the colour of the springs she loves so much.  He remembers Zyane saying something long ago, after too many cups of nunvill: eyes are like glimpses of someone’s soul.

 

It’s fitting that Nyma’s soul is lit by reminders of where she comes from, her favourite parts of a home that isn’t a home.  A free, untethered spirit that shifts with its surroundings.  Rolo wonders what other people see in his own eyes.

 

“I have no blood family left for me,” Nyma continues.  “My mothers and sisters are dead or missing. Before Srah breathed her last, she told me to have hope that I will not be alone.  So I waited and waited, I had no one but myself, until I saw you in a nunvillary.”

 

“Another lonely face in the crowd,” Rolo says, and Nyma laughs quietly.

 

“Yes.  But I did not give you my name back then.”

 

“Because names make you get too attached.”  Rolo understands what Nyma is trying to say.  “My... planet no longer exists, and my only blood family is dead too.  We’re a cowardly people now according to most, because only the cowards escaped execution.  I… can’t tell you more now, but I know I will in the future.”  He looks at Nyma and thinks, _I still trust her_.  “I am Rolo of Zorlar’akh, and neither of us will feel alone again.”

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Rolo still misses his brother with a fierce ache in his heart.  He doesn’t think the weight on his soul will ever lift completely.  But having a friend makes the burden lighter.

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Trust is a fickle thing.  Rolo spits blood and groans, shifting to try and find a position that hurts him less.  Nothing works because no matter what he does, the pain in his left leg flares enough that he can barely think.

 

Well. Where his left leg used to be.

 

So this is how it ends: bleeding out in a Galra cell because their contact sold them out on Kor-9.  He hopes that Nyma is fine, clings to the fact that she isn’t here with him ( _maybe she’s dead — no, she can’t be_ ), which means she probably escaped successfully.  She’ll be a fugitive now that they’re logged in the Galra’s system, but she’s resourceful.  

 

He imagines her fleeing the galaxy — probably after stealing a ship, since that’s what started everything — because theirs is now wrecked and won’t go airborne any more.  He imagines better things, because their ship is gone, poor Beezer is gone, one of his legs is gone, and Nyma is gone —

 

(Rolo remembers the face she made when he was cut down, remembers furiously telling her to leave him, remembers the conflicting sadness and relief when she listened to him and ran.)

 

It’s strange, being alone again.  He wishes he has something grassy to chew on.   _Little familiar things_ , he thinks, laughing weakly to himself.

 

“Not sure what you find so amusing in a situation like _this_ ,” a familiar voice says, with even more familiar fond exasperation, “but we have to get going before those sentries I distracted come back.”

 

“Nyma?”  Rolo wonders if the blood loss is making him hallucinate.

 

“The one and only.”

 

“You… came back?”

 

“Of course I did.”  

 

 _‘You’re not alone any more’_ isn’t said out loud, but Rolo understands.  

 

She’s tightening the soaked cloth he wrapped around the stump of his leg earlier; his vision whites and he loses sense of time.  When he comes back to himself, he’s on Nyma’s back, and they’re leaving a trail of blood behind them.  It feels like he has to apologize, so he does. “Sorry.”

 

Nyma keeps running.  “Why?”  Her voice is strained.  Rolo can feel her arms shaking, but she doesn’t let go of him.  

 

“You left Merxes because you were tired of just surviving,” he mutters, struggling to keep his eyes open.  The missing weight on his left side makes him feel off-balance in more than one way, even though Nyma is carrying him.  The pain doesn’t help either.  “Looks like you’re back to where you started because I made a mistake.”

 

“Shut up.”  She runs and runs.  Her footsteps are loud against the metal floors, but not loud enough to cover the distant shouts and gunfire. “We’re both going to live, so shut up.”

 

Rolo laughs quietly.  He doesn’t bother telling Nyma to leave him behind again.  He figures she’d find it insulting since she deliberately went back for him.  “You’re a good friend,” he says, thinking it’s important to do so now.  “My brother would have liked you.”

 

“Stop talking like you’re dying.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

“You are.”

 

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Rolo admits.  He tries to stay awake so he’s not a dead weight on Nyma’s back.  “Is it annoying?”

 

“Very.”  She pinches his leg.  “Tell me about your brother.”

 

* * *

 

Rolo got to Zyane before the Galra, but the Galra followed his ship to Zyane.

 

The rebels on Zorlar’akh were rounded up and arrested. Zyane swore that Rolo had nothing to do with the rebellion for as long as he was still able to.  Rolo had to promise his brother not to do anything stupid and to stay alive, no matter what.

 

The Zorlarians were given a choice: join the Galra, or die.  Most were stubborn, and they ended up with the rebels.  Others like Rolo swore fealty to Zarkon.  They were herded onto a ship as prisoners and were forced to watch as the cruisers ripped their planet apart with ion cannon bombardment.  There was nothing left of the Zorlarian system except new debris to join its asteroid belt.  

 

Zorlar was made an example, like the near-mythical Altea millennia ago, and other galaxies that tried to resist the Empire.

 

Rolo managed to lay low and escape suspicion after many cycles.  He became a cargo pilot.  Another group of freedom fighters who knew about Zorlar’s rebels chose him because of where he was born.  He thought of Zyane, and agreed to join them.

 

Zyane was a good man who deserved far better than a blaster shot to the head.  Rolo remembered the little things best, like the grass in his mouth, the smudges of engine oil, the constant sound of tools and tinkering, the crooked grin.  He was someone who was determined to fix things, even up until his death.  His hero.

 

(“He sounds like a good brother,” Nyma says quietly.

 

“He was,” Rolo answers, before finally passing out.)

 

* * *

 

Rolo doesn’t remember how they escape.  When he wakes up quintants later, blinking blearily on a lumpy cot that digs at his shoulders, Nyma is tight-lipped and tight-eyed and refuses to go into detail.  She says that she doesn’t want to think about it any more, that it’s over and done with, so he lets it go.

 

The surgeon tells him that he’s lucky to be alive after bleeding out for so long.  He believes them.  Once his health improves, they give him his new left leg.  Nyma doesn’t tell him where — or who — she stole it from, either.  

 

He mourns for Beezer when he finally has the energy to spare on grief and sentimentality.  He thinks back to a conversation which happened what feels like lifetimes ago: Nyma telling him to be careful with names lest he get too attached. She's right again, because he misses the robot even though he can always reprogram another.

 

He doesn’t realize that he isn't the only one who got attached, until Nyma grins and pulls a hidden and familiar microchip out from under her headband.  “Naming something after your crashed ship is bad luck, don't you think?” she says lightly.  To both their delight, putting the chip in another cyber-unit chassis brings their beeping companion back to life.

 

It takes Rolo a long time to adjust to his leg.  It takes them longer to find another ship now that they're wanted criminals on the Galra’s records.  It takes them longer still to repay debts incurred along the way, favours for more favours and even more favours.

 

They have nowhere to go to nor back to.  But they’re still alive and they still have each other, and that makes them feel better off than most.

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

“Hm. That went poorly.”

 

In retrospect, trying to trick Voltron was a bad idea.  They’re stranded on an asteroid with no Blue Lion and a broken ship.  Rolo looks up at the stars and smiles ruefully to himself; the constellations are achingly familiar from their current location in the Zorlarian asteroid belt.  He wonders if the asteroid they’re on used to be a piece of his home.

 

Nyma laughs. "Understatement of the deca-phoeb.  Told you we couldn’t outfly those Lions."

 

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right again.”  Rolo throws himself dramatically to the ground.  

 

"I think it’s your turn this time.”  Nyma raises an eyebrow, amused.  “Next nunvill's on me if you can fix this?"

 

"It’s a deal."

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

_Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted._

(Abraham Verghese, _Cutting for Stone_ )

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. [kickingshoes' art](http://kickingshoes.tumblr.com/post/163416369767/) is also on Tumblr so reblog and show them some love! Please do NOT use or repost without their permission. http://kickingshoes.tumblr.com/post/163416369767/
> 
> 2\. This fic was inspired by Wolfmother's song "Joker and the Thief".
> 
> 3\. Zyane's name is thanks to the Starboy zine Discord chat.  
>  
> 
> Feel free to chat with me on twitter @legdesvender or tumblr @legendarydesvender! Thanks so much for reading!


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